Today's puzzle bankrolls prime fingers.
Find our guide to New York Times Connections answers and hints for October 2 below.
Spoilers lie ahead for Connections #1,209. Only read on if you want to know today's Connections answers.
Plus, we're including a reflection on yesterday's puzzle, #1,208, in case you're reading this in a different time zone.
Alternatively, visit our how to play NYT Connections guide for tips on how to solve the puzzle without our help.
What is Connections
Solving Connections relies on identifying connecting categories among 16 words. Each category's difficulty level is represented by a color; yellow is the easiest grouping, and purple is the most challenging. Once you've made 4 mistakes in your guesses, the answers will be revealed, so hints can be helpful.
Every day, we update this article with Connections hints and tips to help you find all 4 of today's answers so you can keep your Connections streak going. And if the clues aren't enough, you'll find all four answers below, with the category titles and the correlating words.
Today's Connections answer — hints to help you solve it
Today's Connection Grid and Words
- Little
- Real Estate
- Common
- Ring
- Index
- Fund
- Bankroll
- Rib
- Standard
- Middle
- Stock
- Support
- Back
- Number
- Routine
- Time
We have the Connections categories below, but here's a hint without the actual titles. Try this out:
- 🟨 Yellow: Money
- 🟩 Green: Digits
- 🟦 Blue: Usual
- 🟪 Purple: Main
Today's Connections Group Hints
If you need hints to solve the groupings, then here are the themes of each, based on the order of difficulty:
- 🟨 Yellow: Finance
- 🟩 Green: Fingers
- 🟦 Blue: Customary
- 🟪 Purple: Prime ____
These hints should get you at least some of the way towards finding today's Connections answers. If not, then you can read on for bigger clues; or, if you just want to know the answer, then scroll down further.
Today's Connections answers
The Connections answers on October 2 for puzzle #1,209 are harder than yesterday's puzzle, with the Connections Companion rating this puzzle's difficulty at 2.5 out of 5.
- 🟨 Finance: Back, bankroll, fund, support
- 🟩 Fingers: Index, little, middle, ring
- 🟦 Customary: Common, routine, standard, stock
- 🟪 Prime ____: Number, real estate, rib, time
Today's puzzle is harder and it took me a moment to suss out the harder sets. I spotted the yellow set right away but left it for the end.
I'm not sure which word clicked fingers for me but I grabbed ring, little, middle and index as my first submitted set.
As the words shifted, primerib clicked in my place for me. That led to prime number, then prime time and eventually prime real estate but that took just putting prime in front of other words.
At this point, the final eight made me concerned that I wasn't right about the yellow set since I didn't have the blue. I stuck to my guns and put in common, routine, standard and stock first to get the blue customary set.
And I wrapped it up with the financial back, bankroll, fund and support.
Yesterday's Connections answers
- 🟨 Put: Place, position, situate, stick
- 🟩 Dress shirt measurements: Chest, neck, sleeve, waist
- 🟦 2000s indie rock bands, with "the": Decemberists, national, shins, walkmen
- 🟪 Starts of NYT print puzzles: Acro, cross, ken, sud
Reading this in a later time zone? Here are the Connections answers for game #1,208 which had a difficulty rating of 2 out of 5.
Maybe I'm showing my age but I immediately clocked the indie bands with The Decemberists, The Shins, The National and The Walkmen.
I was guessing with the purple set I grabbed next, with the start of acrostic, crossword, kenken and sudoku. I don't think I've ever played kenken, though.
I was not actually thinking about shirts when I picked chest, neck, sleeve and waist. Instead, my thought was tattoo locations.
Then let's drop in place, position, situate and stick to wrap it all up.
